A property developer should set the marketing budget by working backwards from the cost they can afford per sale, multiplied by the number of units to sell, then phase it so the heaviest spend lands at pre-launch and launch. Budgeting this way ties every shilling to deposits and keeps you from either starving the launch or wasting money on awareness you cannot measure.
Start with what a sale can carry
Most developers already know their margin per unit. From that, decide how much of each sale you are willing to spend on acquiring the buyer. The share varies by project, price point and how much of the sales effort sits with brokers. The point is to decide it deliberately, then hold your campaigns to it.
Here is an example. The numbers are for illustration only.
| Item | Example |
|---|---|
| Units to sell through marketing | 60 |
| Marketing cost you can carry per sale | KES 250,000 |
| Total marketing budget | KES 15,000,000 |
Split the budget between ads and everything else
The ad spend is only part of the cost. A complete budget usually covers:
- Media: Meta, Google, TikTok and portal listings.
- Content: site and show unit footage, buyer testimonials, construction progress videos.
- Conversion: landing pages, WhatsApp setup and an AI agent for instant follow-up.
- Management: the team or agency running and optimising campaigns.
Phase it across the project
| Phase | Share of effort | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-launch | High | Waitlist, testing creative and price messages |
| Launch | Highest | Converting the waitlist, maximum reach |
| Construction | Steady | Progress updates, retargeting, referrals |
| Final units | Targeted | Specific unit types, completion and handover proof |
Measure spend against deposits, not clicks
The budget only works if you can see which spend produced which sale. That means:
- A CRM or lead sheet that records the source of every lead.
- Tracking each lead through to site visit, deposit and sale.
- Sending those outcomes back to Meta through the Conversions API so the algorithm learns from them.
With that in place you can review the budget every two weeks and move money toward the channels and creatives with the lowest cost per deposit.
When to spend more
If your cost per deposit is comfortably below what a sale can carry, the budget is too small, not too big. Scale until cost per deposit approaches your limit. Maisha Development went from sales down 30% to turnover up 20%, the kind of result that justifies scaling. See our work, or ) and we will build a budget model for your project.